


momentum shift

by narootos



Series: point by point [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Tennis, Eventual Romance, M/M, Minor Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou, atsumu is a doubles specialist who can’t keep a partner, osamu just wants him to be happy, sakuatsu but as seen by osamu, sakusa plays himself, the tour clown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narootos/pseuds/narootos
Summary: osamu follows a year in his brother’s tennis career.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: point by point [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751929
Comments: 15
Kudos: 309





	momentum shift

**Author's Note:**

> hi it’s me back with more boys but they’re tennis. ive been HIT HARD with the sakuatsu feels and i just wanted to get them out. not beta’d but it was good fun to write this little thing so i hope you stick around and enjoy!

Osamu doesn’t share Atsumu’s decision to join the seniors tour. 

Atsumu reminds him they won majors in Boy’s Doubles together, and they could build on that potential to do “the real thing”. Atsumu was always under the impression they had some sort of plan with tennis, and they could be famous and have it made, but that was when they were kids. Osamu is good, but he knows Atsumu is more suited to spend the rest of his life pursuing tennis, pursuing heights Osamu doesn’t long to reach like he does. He reassures his twin brother that he’s skilled enough to win important titles with anyone decent at doubles. 

Regardless, Atsumu spends their latter teenage years bitter about it, missing his other half, the familiarity, the sound assurance of playing with someone who can keep up with him. He’s lucky to have the security of the juniors tour to bring him some connections and familiarity with ITF tournaments. He partners with talented Japanese doubles players, makes it far in tournaments, wins a couple futures and challenger titles. Osamu watches his matches on ITF streams and texts him after the good victories.

When Atsumu and his partner at the time get the big opportunity of a wildcard into an ATP 500 in Tokyo, they’re thoroughly beaten.

The struggle in the transition for Atsumu is that he can’t make a partner stay. They’ll tell him what they know he already knows, that his attitude sucks, that he makes them nervous, that he demands too much from their level in comparison. That he has no understanding during matches, and it’s frustrating.

 _“If ya can’t win with me on your side of the court then ya ain’t good at tennis.”_ Osamu remembers wanting to deck Atsumu when he says it to another junior player during practice once upon a time, but he supposes worded differently, there really is some truth to it.

Atsumu is used to playing with someone he can have total faith in to let him play his best. And Osamu is never sure if he’ll find that. 

Still, he manages to break the top fifty of the ATP doubles ranking by the time he turns twenty-one. He floats around that ranking for a few more years, comfortably making a living with a few good tournament runs a year, but otherwise entirely dissatisfied. He spends nights lamenting his career to Osamu over the phone during tournaments, always in hotel rooms separate from his partners, who could usually care less for him off the court. He builds a reputation for being ditched by partners who he can’t produce results with. It’s not what he wants, he tells Osamu, and Osamu believes him, but it always ends up the same way. 

During the short December offseason, he sits at Onigiri Miya and enjoys the one surefire joy he has in his brother’s food. It goes like this for a while, two twenty-four year old brothers doing their best to support each other’s paths. One night, Atsumu confides in Osamu that he’s worried his potential has been reached, or maybe that he’s unfixable. Osamu tells him that’s garbage, but he can see how the drawbacks lead him to believe it. 

Atsumu has no partner for the Australian Open that January until Sakusa Kiyoomi, twenty spots above him in the rankings, splits with his partner of a few years. 

He reiterates, Atsumu tells his brother over the phone, that he’s only working with Atsumu because it’s last minute and Atsumu is good. It’s good enough for Atsumu, who will work with just about anyone as long as they don’t bog him down with shitty tennis. Osamu has a bad feeling about it at first, because he’s familiar with Sakusa. 

Putting two blunt jerks together in a doubles partnership is something he spends an entire night mulling over with Suna. 

After a week’s worth of practice Atsumu tells Osamu he has to come down to Australia to watch him and Omi-kun. He positively, absolutely, inarguably must. Atsumu has never asked Osamu to travel anywhere outside of Japan for a tournament before, and it isn’t the first time he’s played in a major. It shatters Osamu to leave Onigiri Miya outside his immediate attendance, but it’s apparently that important to Atsumu, so he and Suna take a flight down to Melbourne and meet Sakusa in person. Atsumu must feel something different this time, and from the texts he’s been getting, Osamu is pretty sure of it. 

He knows Sakusa prefers waves as greetings or none at all, so Osamu sticks with “nice to meet you”. Sakusa barely gives them a nod and Osamu can tell Suna isn’t vibing with him from the start. He reminds him that it’s important to Atsumu, so they have to accept his partner, rude or not. Sakusa stays focused on his task with Atsumu, who he keeps relative distance from, since it’s just practice. Sakusa makes remarks lowly at Atsumu from the very start, and as partners they’re relatively spatty. Osamu deduces that for all intents and purposes, they shouldn’t be good doubles partners. They’re two very powerful energies in one way or another, Atsumu with an all around ease to his play and Sakusa with a game more technically sound and thoughtful than most. At some point they’ll have to explode, he guesses. 

Suna comes back with his snacks and sits next to Osamu just as Sakusa and Atsumu’s first round begins. They’re on a somewhat greater outer court because their opposition is Australian, but not quite enough for seating better than bleachers. It’s hot and he’s just thankful for the shade, and it’s impossible to imagine what kind of hell it must be for Sakusa and Atsumu on the heat-retaining surface of the court.

“I feel like I just jumped in a sweat lake,” Suna says, and holds his veggie chips open for Osamu. “It’s too hot for watching manly men exercise.”

“Where’s my Suna and what have you done with him,” Osamu responds blankly, and the chair umpire calls the start of the match. 

Osamu is fully prepared for disaster. Instead, he’s entranced by an Atsumu he never imagined he’d see. 

They hold their first service game to 15- not any real trouble. Osamu eyes the distance that Atsumu keeps from Sakusa, making sure he can be heard but isn’t standing directly up next to him, and when they go to exchange hands they tap their racquets together instead. Osamu can’t tell if it’s an extra effort from Atsumu to conform to his partner’s needs, or just a mutual understanding. Or maybe Atsumu just feels like he needs this one to stick. Maybe it’s something to do with Sakusa being ranked ahead of him. 

Whatever it is, Osamu has never seen it from Atsumu before. He thinks it in the least derogatory of ways, but there just isn’t an ounce of disdain for Sakusa’s tennis in Atsumu’s body language. Atsumu has the skill to comprehend Sakusa’s consistent technicality, and Sakusa lets Atsumu spread his wings and play his game. It hasn’t been long since they established their partnership, but Osamu sees something that could really, really work- and the evidence is a 6-2, 6-2 first round victory. A demolition job.

Sakusa and Atsumu don’t hug when they win the match, but Atsumu looks happy at the very least. Atsumu gives the usual handshakes to the opposition and the chair umpire, and Sakusa sticks to fist bumps.

When they go to gather themselves at their bench before leaving the court, Atsumu looks to his brother’s seat for approval. His eyes seek the reassurance that this might just be real this time, even if it’s just one first round win at one tournament (and if Sakusa’s word reigns true, it could be the one and only). 

Osamu gives him a thumbs up. 

They don’t stay for Atsumu’s entire tournament run, but it’s good news if any. Sakusa and Atsumu make the deepest run at a major that either of them ever have, losing a close match to a top-seeded team in the semifinal. It gives their rankings quite a hoist, and gives Atsumu’s confidence an even greater one. The most important thing is the text from Atsumu confirming that Sakusa will be joining him again in Acapulco and Indian Wells, at the very least. 

It gives Osamu a chance to continue keeping tabs on his brother via his tennis subscription, and he swears to Suna he isn’t that invested, but Suna wasn’t born yesterday. 

Sakusa and Atsumu win their first title together in Miami, just over a week after a semifinal run in Indian Wells. 

It’s an incredible development for Atsumu, and nobody has to know Osamu cries over his dinner in front of the TV set watching his twin brother hoist a Masters 1000 trophy. It’s one of his biggest career goals, just below the tour finals and a major. Atsumu is an emotional pseudo-poet at the microphone for his winner’s speech. Sakusa says “Thank you for a good week.”

Over the next few months, Osamu can tell something is breaking down between Atsumu and Sakusa, and it isn’t their partnership. It’s the wall. 

He finally starts using twitter, looking at photos from practices posted by official tournament pages, and notices how the two start picking up popularity among tennis fans. The love for Sakusa is somewhat ironic, because he really wants nothing to do with fan attention and everyone seems to know that, and the attention Atsumu gets is mixed between people who just think he’s an ass and people who think he’s an ass and love it. 

Along with their increased social media attention, they make a quarterfinal run at the French Open, and another semifinal run at Wimbledon. Osamu expects his texts to be riddled with complaints about how the final is always so out of reach, but instead Atsumu surprises him by saying it’s more steps in the right direction.

They win Cincinnati and the Roger’s Cup back to back, bringing their total number of Masters 1000 titles as a team to three, and from Osamu’s perspective, Sakusa’s wall between himself and Atsumu is just about the size of a pet gate at this point. It’s a real possibility that their chemistry could take them to winning the entire US Open Series.

Atsumu texts Osamu about the real possibility the night before their US Open final. 

_it could really finally be happenin’, samu._

_it really could be, tsumu._

Osamu watches the match from home. Atsumu has a nervous start that he has to work through for a while, but ultimately balances alongside Sakusa. They have a hiccup in the second, but win in three sets. When it’s all over Suna gives him an excitable hug from behind, but Osamu can’t comprehend anything besides the way Atsumu falls on the court, the way Sakusa smiles just for a moment when the ball falls into the net on match point. When Sakusa grabs Atsumu’s sleeve and shakes it, and Atsumu does the same back with a little more vigor. How they clap their racquets in gratitude to the crowd in their own space, but also in appreciation for each other. 

But it’s Sakusa’s face when Atsumu holds up his coveted major trophy at last that almost makes Osamu crumble. It’s only over a camera angle on a tv screen, but Osamu has never seen someone look at his brother with such awe and adoration. It’s soft, shocked, like an epiphany, a realization of the past months come to fruition. 

Sakusa came to Atsumu looking for anything. He ended up finding everything.

Osamu is still up hours and hours later, having rewatched the match once and the trophy ceremony a couple times. For a little while he lets himself selfishly forget what his brother has found in his doubles partner and smiles about him thanking “his bro Samu” in his speech. Atsumu reminds him what really matters in kind.

_samu._

Osamu thinks he already knows. 

_yeah, tsumu?_

His phone goes off a few minutes later. 

_it’s real._ and Osamu knows.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> beefkuto on twitter


End file.
